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starting school

Starting school: What is the best age for children?

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As an early childhood educator, I am often asked by parents and carers of young children, when is the best age for children to start school. I know there can be anxiety about this decision as parents and carers want starting school to be a positive and rewarding experience for their child. There’s lots of advice out there, some quite useful, but it often misses the key elements of what makes for a great school start.

In Australia, it is a government requirement in every state for a child to be enrolled and attend school in the year they are turning six. While the cut-off dates and names of the first year of school differ accordingly across each state, the general rule is that an enrolling child will be already 5 and turning 6 usually by mid-year.

While somewhat useful, these cut-off dates are age-related and do not consider the school-readiness of your child. The school-readiness material is plentiful—When should your child start school? ; School Ready Toolkits (at a cost); and Smooth Transition from pre-school to school—and definitely worth a read if you have the time.

Delayed entry is more common in Australia

Although the research findings are mixed, some studies show that parents who delay school entry believe that their child will be better off by starting school later. Although the long term impact is less clear, some research indicates that older children, in the first few years of school, experience better socio-behavioural and academic outcomes. Due to flexible entry policies in Australia, delayed entry tends to be more common in Australia than other countries like the USA.  

While these materials are a good rule of thumb, they can be overwhelming, confusing and often contradictory. The advice they give doesn’t really consider the fact that all children progress and develop at different rates. Further, age-related guidelines do not account for how children approach the challenges of more formalised education. Children need a range of social, physical and cognitive attributes to be ready to start school.

Many parents decide to delay their child from starting school. However, there is mixed evidence that holding a child back has a lasting effect on academic achievement.

Starting school: Three important questions

Here are three important questions that I think would be most helpful to guide you in making this very important decision for you and your child.

1. Have you talked with your early childhood educators?

I think this is the most important advice I could give you. Educators in the year prior to school are guided nationally by the Early Years Learning Framework  which aims to develop our young learners as active, engaged, informed and creative. After spending a good part of the year with your child, teachers and teacher assistants have in-depth knowledge about your child and how they will embrace a new and different learning environment.

Your child’s educators know how important a smooth and quality transition to school is and will always advocate a collaborative approach. Your voice is an important part of this approach: educators appreciate that you know your child in so many other ways. If your child does not attend kindergarten, then perhaps there are other education professionals with whom you could talk.

2. Does your child show an interest in the world around them?

Thinking back to my time as an early childhood educator working in kindergarten, I wanted my young learners to leave me knowing who they were, knowing how to communicate effectively, having positive relationships with others, being confident with their bodies, and having a thirst for learning and knowledge. I wanted to distil in them an enquiring disposition where they were curious and eager to find out about things, willing to try new things, and to problem solve about the big and little things in their immediate lives.  

So, ask yourself these questions: how ready is my child to learn new things and how ready are they to talk with others about their learnings?  Often these skills are evident when sharing a book or multimedia item, or being out in the environment on a bush walk or in the local park. Take note here, as in these sharing sessions children show their best in terms of being inquisitive about their world.

3. How ready is my child to navigate a new learning environment? 

What makes a prior-to-school setting? Having taught extensively in both environments, I know that prior-to-school settings tend to be characterised by less structure and more play-based activities. Children have more choice about where to be involved, and often with whom they work, and learning can often be transdisciplinary. In most prior-to-school settings children spend the whole day with the same group of people where support is available for all activities including visiting the toilet and eating.

How is school different?

While the first year of school can mirror the above characteristics, it is generally the case that school tends to be more structured and discipline-based. There can be fewer opportunities to choose activities and working buddies, and participate in play.

It’s also good to consider how the physical environment can differ. Desks may be prioritised over more informal learning areas. Learning expectations and the introduction of different rules and regulations can sometimes cause distress. The highly personalised relationships of prior-to-school settings are often replaced by slightly less personalised ones where children may spend their play time and some learning activities away from the classroom teacher.

It is important to note that most children cope well with starting school and today schools put in an enormous effort to make children feel comfortable and supported in their transition to school.

You don’t have to make this decision on your own

Remember that you don’t have to make this decision on your own and that collaborative decision making is the best way forward. Talk with your early childhood educators and consider their advice. And think about the other two ideas above. These ideas will help you to develop an informed understanding about your child and this important education transition. Good luck!

It is timely that those with an interest in this very important area carry out more research to examine trends and young children’s educational and socio-behavioural outcomes given the decision to delay or not to delay starting school. This would then arm parents and the wider educational community with more informed and helpful understandings to reflect the current situation in Australia. 

Lesley has extensive experience in working across multiple university platforms as researcher and lecturer; has taught children of different age groups across international boundaries. Her research interests include literacy and language learning within the context of globalisation.

NAPLAN: Time to think differently

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It’s not the results of NAPLAN that are the problem. It is NAPLAN testing itself. These standardised tests contribute to the maintenance of a deeply unequal system. 

The release of NAPLAN results in August prompted an avalanche of responses from politicians, commentators and researchers  all with a take on how to understand the continued ‘declining results’ in the national standardised testing program. 

The federal minister for education Jason Clare responded the morning the results were released, noting the inequities in the system: “There’s about one in ten children who sit these tests that are below what we used to call the minimum standard. But it’s one in three kids from poor families, one in three kids from the bush, one in three Indigenous kids. In other words, your parents’ pay packet, where you live, the colour of your skin affects your chances in life.”

He also said, “The results showed why school funding talks were crucial — not just to supply extra money, but to reform classroom practices.”  Jordana Hunter and Nick Parkinson from the Grattan Institute agreed: NAPLAN results laid bare stark inequities within our education system. And “high quality teaching and support”’ leads to almost all students learning to read competently. 

Other perspectives

But other perspectives, from experienced education researcher Jim Tognolini warns “there is only so much ‘growth’ that can occur across one or two years of learning”. And Gore, another experienced researchers, argues: “Students are more than their brains . .  they learn in social and emotional conditions that also need to be addressed.”

Calls for evidence-backed solutions to the problem have also abounded. While it is important not to dismiss the role of evidence in addressing these problems, there is also room to consider how a structural analysis that takes into consideration some different theoretical lenses, might both reveal different insights on the problems and different possible solutions. 

Take, for example, the decline in the mental health of young people. On the same morning (and on the same radio station), Jason Clare responded to the NAPLAN results, Patrick McGorry, Executive Director of Orygen and lead author of the Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Youth Mental Health report revealed findings that the ‘mental health of young people has been declining over the past two decades, signalling a warning that global megatrends and changes in many societies are increasing mental ill health.’

Correlations

It is worth noting that the global trend in standardised testing and comparison also emerged over the last two decades. The correlations of a number of these issues is significant: NAPLAN results have been declining; youth mental health has been declining; school exclusion and refusal has been increasing; the disruptive and distressing effects of global warming have been increasing; global inequality has been increasing; surveillance capitalism has been increasing; and we are currently watching a genocide live streamed to our phones while students and staff are discouraged from talking about it.

When viewed together these trends point towards a global system of inequity, in which as noted above the unequal schooling system in Australia is but one component. This means the inequities in the education system cannot be fixed by providing more funding and supporting better quality teaching (although these things are of course, incredibly important), but require a closer look at the broader system of inequality. And what we find when we look at that system is that inequality is required in the system. 

Capitalism and colonialism, systems that our societies and schools have grown out of, and continue to inform their operations, are based on maintaining gaps between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, between those who ‘succeed’ and those who ‘fail’. 

The system must be reckoned with

While Jason Clare and others might be concerned about such NAPLAN gaps in achievement of the poor, those who live rurally and First Nations students, the system that produces these gaps must be reckoned with if a solution is to be found. 

Anthropologist Jason Hickel, based in Barcelona, points out ‘capitalism is predicated on surplus extraction and accumulation; it must take more from labour and nature than it gives back…such a system necessarily generates inequalities and ecological breakdown.’ 

Further, he notes ‘what makes capitalism distinctive, and uniquely problematic, is that it is organised around, and dependent on, perpetual growth.’ And he shows how this perpetual growth has relied for centuries on colonial appropriation of land and resources, enclosure, enslavement and exploitation, and cheapening of labour to underpin capitalist growth. 

This is the system that schooling sits within. Thus the white, wealthy, urban families that Jason Clare points out, have children who achieve on the NAPLAN test, demonstrate the colonial, capitalist system working as it is designed to.

Unequal by design

US education researcher  Wayne Au, argues high-stakes testing (such as NAPLAN) is unequal by design and operates to standardise inequality. Au explores how ‘the data produced by the tests are used as the metric for determining value, which in turn is used for comparison and competition in the educational marketplace.’ He also outlines how high-stakes, standardised tests ‘perpetuate institutionalized racism and white supremacy, and they are functionally weaponized against working-class communities of color’.

This leads, therefore, to a situation in which it’s not so much about which evidence-based teaching strategies are working but which schools in the unequal market system have the capacity to extract test results from students that produce the greatest market value. That is, the results in Australia that get recorded on the MySchool website and enable the marketing of their school as a higher achieving school. The recording of other attributes of the school community on the MySchool website also contribute to the institutionalised racism and classism that Au outlines.

I’d argue this then gives some schools more power in the market system and allows them to accumulate surpluses. Surpluses might be in the form of more teachers wanting to teach at their school which can lead to smaller class sizes (particularly in the teacher shortage) or it might be in the form of more students wanting to attend their school which leads to greater resourcing when resources are attached to student enrollments. More research is needed to understand this phenomenon.

Organised abandonment

Through these processes of extraction and accumulation, violence also occurs. North American theorist Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that certain racialized and impoverished communities are subject to ‘group differentiated vulnerability to premature death.’ In other words, the capitalist state deliberately under-resources particular groups so that they are more vulnerable to premature death. Wilson Gilmore calls these practices ‘organised abandonment.’ 

There are welcome calls for better funding of disadvantaged schools. But the long-standing practice of under-funding public schools in poorer communities in Australia is an example of organised abandonment,entrenches inequality in ways that increased funding alone will have little chance of shifting.

A different possible solution to the problem is to abolish standardised testing and the MySchool website and undo the market based system of schooling. If we are serious about addressing academic achievement, mental wellbeing, poverty, racial discrimination and global warming we must build an education system that is anti-colonial and anti-capitalist. This requires abolishing harmful systems of competition, extraction, accumulation and corporate growth and investing in systems of deep care for, in Jason Hickel’s words, ‘human needs (use-value) through de-accumulation, de-enclosure and de-commodification.’

 Sophie Rudolph is a senior research fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. Her research and teaching involves sociological and historical analyses and is informed by critical theories. She is currently working on a DECRA project investigating the history and politics of racialised school discipline and exclusion in Victoria.

Student engagement data: what does it actually mean?

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With the many distractions facing students today – laptops, smartphones and social media, just to name a few – it is not surprising that teachers want to keep track of what their students are doing in and outside of class. EdTech companies promise teachers to track their students’ engagement automatically and in real time. They often offer visually appealing dashboard with easy interpretable graphs. But what do these tools actually measure? And what can we read from those dashboards? 

Engagement data, as I call them in a recently published article, can be found in Learning Management Systems (LMS), such as Moodle and Canvas. They can also be found in learning platforms commonly used in primary and secondary education, such as Education Perfect and MathSpace. Even online library Epic! offers engagement data. Engagement data should be seen as any sort of metrics that claim to say something about students’ on-task behaviour, their interaction with a platform or any predictive analysis based on these interactions. Engagement data differs from performance data, which is all about results, however, sometimes engagement data is correlated with performance data to ‘assess’ risk.

There are, roughly, five different types of engagement data. They are time-on-task data, task completion data, participation data, technical data and biometric data.

Time on task

Time-on-task data is based on the time students have spent on the platform. It is a common element in most LMS. Whether or not this is a good indicator of students’ engagement is questionable. Having a browser window or application open without being involved in learning activities, would not be seen by many teachers as a sign of deep engagement. But on the platforms’ dashboards this is presented as such. 

Engagement data on Education Perfect (source: help.educationperfect.com)

What got done

Task completion data seems to be a more straightforward metric. It actually gives teachers an indication of how many tasks their students have completed. However, this depends very much on how task completion is framed. Epic!, for instance, gives an overview of how many books students have ‘read’. However, students could have just clicked through the pages without having actually read something. Another problem with task completion data is the sheer number of tasks a student has completed comes to stand for a student’s level of engagement. This is especially the case on platforms where the number of tasks is potentially unlimited, such as in Education Perfect, where the system automatically generates new tasks based on students’ performances. Following this logic, the most engaged student is the student who has completed the most tasks. 

A screenshot of student engagement data on the library platform Epic

How reading engagement is measured on Epic (source: getepic.com)

Both contribution data and technical data are more common in the world of social media and online forums than in educational contexts. The first measures the number of posts by an individual student. Students discussing the learning content, then, is seen as an additional indicator of their level of engagement, rather than merely completing learning activities. The LMS Brightspace is a particularly interesting case, as it puts learning data in a sociogram, linking the most popular contributors with each other. It is an idea of ‘social learning’ that has more in common with the way in which we are chasing likes on Instagram and TikTok.

Fig. 4

Contribution data on Brightspace/D2L (source: community.d2l.com) 

Are students users?

Technical data are rather peculiar metrics. They merely describe technical interactions with the platform, such as the number of times specific content has been viewed. These data seem to have very little to do with what is generally understood as engagement by educators and scholars. However, in the world of social media these data are very important. They determine the extent to which content can be monetised. This is called user engagement. But are students users? Increasingly so. More education is delivered through commercial platforms profiting from increased use of licences sold to school or individual students.  

Biometric data is not common on the platforms that are currently used in Australian classrooms. But several experimental studies have looked at tracking students’ engagement by measuring brainwaves or by tracking their eye-movement. Influential organisations such as the OECD even promote these techniques to keep students engaged in the digital world. Apparently, it becomes increasingly normalised to monitor students’ bodies. I have been a teacher myself. I do understand teaching involves some surveillance and control. But as a colleagues of mine once said, can we ask from students to be engaged all the time?   And do we always need to know when they are not? 

The biggest problem

Perhaps the biggest problem with all these types of engagement data is that it frames engagement as something that is per definition measurable. Indeed, anything that cannot be measured cannot be put on a dashboard or be used by algorithms. This ‘technological’ idea of engagement excludes other elements of engagement that are put forward by scholars, such as the emotional and more cognitive dimensions. Engagement data do not show if a student enjoys school, for instance. They also do not show if a student is motivated to do another task or if they are resilient enough to deal with setbacks.  

Educational platforms, then, present a very narrow idea of what engagement is about. The question is: does this affect teachers?  Does it change their perception of what engagement is? So far, little research has been conducted on this topic. With this article I hope to create more awareness on the issue. Let us all reflect what kind of engagement we want to see in our students. Let’s critically reflect on the metrics of engagement put forward by digital learning platforms. 

Chris Zomer is a research fellow for the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. His research interests include the datafication of learning, gamified learning platforms and the use of technology in education more broadly. For his doctoral thesis, he investigated how gamified learning applications reshape ideas, understandings and enactments of student engagement in a private girl school with an ‘academic’ student population.

Professional development announcement by Prue Car

Professional development: The minister claims she trusts teachers. But does she really? 

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The NSW Minister for Education Prue Car has just announced important changes to professional development for registered teachers in NSW. Among them, ‘accredited’ PD has been dumped, along with the constraints of ‘mandatory priority areas’ introduced in 2021, and removing some time-consuming documentation and evaluation. The changes were announced directly to teachers last week via email. In an earnest talking head video, Prue Car vigorously defended the need to trust teachers, as “the architects of learning” and “the experts in identifying the tools and the resources …[they] need”.  

While this focus on trust is admirable, the changes raise some serious questions. 

What counts as teacher professional development?

The Minister emphasised that teachers will be trusted to “choose the professional development that suits their needs”. But when we look at the fine print, there are professional development activities currently highly valued by teachers that are either not included in the Government’s new framework, or explicitly excluded. This includes professional reading, collaborative planning, and the moderation of student assessment – core professional activities at the heart of good teaching practice. Furthermore, while research shows that ‘home grown’, school-based, teacher-led activities are highly effective in supporting teacher development, there is a disturbing pervasive idea that PD is something “delivered” to teachers by a “provider”.

Curiously, “compliance training” is, for the first time, explicitly included as professional development. First aid and child protection updates are undeniably important in maintaining teachers’ fitness to practice. But it is questionable whether they meet the benchmarks of high quality teacher professional development we should be aspiring to. 

Who decides what teachers will do?

The second question is, who decides? While the Minister emphasised that the changes will “ensure that every hour of professional development that you do is relevant and valuable to you and your practice”, the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) website also states that employers “may choose areas of priority for their staff”, decisions which can be made at both a school and “system level”. There has been a trend toward NSW Department of Education ‘control and command’ approaches to dictating the focus and form of professional development activities for public school teachers. This suggests that teachers may continue to have little say in the kind of PD that matters to them. 

The shift from ‘accredited providers’ to ‘recognised providers’ seems at odds with the Minister’s messaging, by reinforcing the idea that teachers are not best placed to decide which PD to engage with. The list of recognised providers will be “overseen by an expert advisory panel”, whose membership is as yet unclear. The use of the term ‘providers’ again suggests a view of PD as something ‘‘delivered’ to teachers rather than something they actively engage with and have ownership over.  

Will teachers’ professional development be monitored?

Finally, while there does seem to be a reduction in administrative compliance work as part of this change, particularly for ‘providers’, teachers will still have to log their hours and be subject to an ‘audit process’ described by the Minister as “an annual review of the PD teachers have recorded so that the 100 hours of appropriate PD can be verified if needed”. This monitoring signals the continuation of “appropriate” teacher professional learning being defined by ‘experts’ (rather than by teachers themselves), which does not include many of the professional learning activities teachers may value the most.

Good teacher professional development is not measured in hours. If, in the words of the Minister, PD has “always been at the heart of [teachers’] practice… it was simply what teachers did”, then why is an auditable log of hours required? It hardly illustrates the ‘trust’ the Minister was at pains to express for teachers.

Increasing trust in teachers is a worthy and much-needed objective. But these changes make little meaningful progress toward it. While teacher PD continues to be framed as a set number of auditable ‘hours’ that are ‘delivered’ by ‘providers’, we will miss an opportunity to genuinely support teachers to do what they value and sustain them in the profession.


From left to right: Nicole Mockler is professor of education within the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. She has a background in secondary school teaching and teacher professional learning. Meghan Stacey is a senior lecturer in the UNSW School of Education, with a particular interest in teachers’ work. She has a background in teaching English and drama in public secondary schools. Claire Golledge is a lecturer in education and the co-ordinator of HSIE Curriculum (Secondary) in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. She worked as a secondary teacher of humanities. Helen Watt is professor of educational psychology at the University of Sydney, initiator of the Network Gender & STEM (www.genderandSTEM.com) and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Header image of Prue Car from the Minister’s Facebook page.

Media reports on reading

READING, part six: The media say we have a reading crisis now . Do we?

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Noella Mackenzie and Martina Tassone explores what the media say about reading. This is the sixth and final post on reading to celebrate Book Week.

What we’ve covered so far:

One: How to find your way through the reading jungle

Two: What really works for readers and when

Three: What is the Simple View of Reading?

Four: What is the Science of Reading?

Five: Why teachers need more than this year’s model

Recently the debates around the best ways to teach reading have been reignited. The media coverage has been fierce, and is often led by people who have little or no experience in mainstream classroom teaching of language or literacy.  Media reports have also been negative and polarising; providing reductionist definitions of reading, simplified solutions to a perceived crisis, and calling for a phonics first (and fast) approach to teaching and assessing reading for all children, without evidence to demonstrate that all children need or benefit from this narrow approach to reading instruction.  

A highly regarded Australian academic argues that Australia’s ‘right-wing media have a lot to answer for in terms of fostering narrow approaches to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment . . .’. In England and the United States of America (USA) the aggressive media commentary on the teaching of reading has contributed to policy mandates that demand or exclude specific literacy instructional practices. 

Crisis? What crisis?

In recent times, media outlets have switched their narrative from the Simple View of Reading (SVR) and the Science of Reading (SOR) (Post 4) to Structured Literacy (SL) (Post 5) and explicit teaching. We dispute the perceived literacy crisis that is so often reported by the media and the idea that the science related to reading, is settled (Post 4). It is the perceived literacy crisis that we tackle here. 

Australia does not have a reading crisis. Recently an analysis of 25 years of Australian national and international standardised assessment data, and found that student literacy data have remained consistent, despite different policies and approaches to literacy teaching. Australia has participated in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) test every four years since 2011. Australia’s results improved between 2011 and 2016 and then remained consistent. Table 1 shows the mean scores for Australia, England, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore in 2011, 2016 and 2021.

CountryMean scores (out of a possible 600)
201120162021
Singapore576576587
Hong Kong571569573
England552559558
Australia527544540
New Zealand531523521
Table 1 PIRLS data

In 2021, Australia had 80% of students reaching the PIRLs benchmarks. Only six countries achieved higher: Italy (83%), Finland (84%), England (86%), Russia (89%), Singapore (90%) and Hong Kong (92%). Twenty-eight countries had lower scores than Australia in 2021. 

Funding and fairness

A continuing trend for Australia is the poor outcomes for students from low SES and Indigenous backgrounds. Perhaps Australia’s literacy outcomes have more to do with funding and fairness than pedagogy.

The data from the 2022 Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA), which assesses the literacy skills of students who are 15 years old, show Australia’s performance is above the OECD average. That’s comparable to America, and slightly above students from the United Kingdom. Eight countries were identified as performing significantly higher than Australia and 68 countries performed significantly lower. 

Australia’s performance has remained relatively unchanged since 2015, whereas the United Kingdom’s results have declined. Despite this evidence, some think we would benefit from importing approaches to literacy teaching from England and the US. 

Borrowing policy

Countries often “policy borrow” from other countries; despite advice that innovation is more likely to be more effective than borrowing.  Highly respected Australian researchers  question the appropriateness of Australia looking to the US and the UK for guidance in education. 

Australia’s borrowing of educational ideas from other countries is ill-advised. Why do we accept the myths and beliefs underpinning educational innovations almost without evidence or questioning? Is it because of our close links with the UK and the USA, instead of their proven success and transferability? If so, how wise is this? 

Others have also questioned Australia’s policy borrowing. They have argued instead for policy learning that takes into account ‘national and local histories, cultures and so on’.

Policy borrowing led to the introduction of standardised testing system based on systems used in the USA and England. It is questionable whether Australia learned from the mistakes of the USA and England when designing NAPLAN. The Phonics Check is another example of policy borrowing. 

Why are we borrowing policies from countries that are not doing any better than Australia? 

 England’s Department for Education (DfE) has acknowledged that “evidence suggests that the introduction of the check has had an impact on pupils’ attainment in phonics, but not an identifiable impact on their attainment in literacy’. Enjoyment of reading by children in England is at its lowest level since 2005.

In addition to the falloff in enjoyment of reading, it is estimated that up to 25% of upper primary school students in England are unable to meet expected reading standards. They also lack the fluency required to extract meaning from age-related texts. 

Despite this, a recent Grattan institute report encourages Australia to follow England and the US initiatives to improve literacy learning. That’s despite any evidence to suggest approaches to literacy teaching in these countries work any better than those already operating in Australia.

Follow carefully

When policy shopping perhaps we should choose the countries we follow more carefully. In the republic of Ireland children outperform their English peers in reading without an emphasis on Synthetic phonics.  Additionally, Canada’s success, where curricula until most recently were mostly aligned with Balanced Literacy (BL), has largely been ignored. 

We contend that policy makers should critically consider what is happening in Australia before adopting policies from other countries that have not been proven to work better than approaches well established in Australian schools, as demonstrated by data. They should also consider the plethora of reading research that is available.  

Much is written about reading research. But teachers sometimes only get to read research papers or summaries of papers that their employer has pre-chosen to support current policy or to provide the rationale for proposed changes. Further doubts and insecurities are fuelled by inaccurate media reports of declining reading standards, suggestions that teachers are the cause of this decline, and claims that reading science is settled. A common claim from those outside education, is that teacher education courses have neglected to teach what teachers need to know about reading. That’s despite rigorous teacher education accreditation processes.

A narrow view of reading

Suggested solutions to the perceived reading crisis are often based on a narrow view of reading and reading research. They do not take into consideration the needs or contexts of all learners. At this time the recommended approaches are scripted, commercial packages that prioritise phonics and decoding using texts with phonologically regular words (called decodable texts), and controlled language with limited meaning. These texts were originally designed for use with beginning readers. But publishers have taken up the challenge of creating this style of texts for all primary grades. The outcome? Some schools have removed all of their predictive and authentic texts and those classified as wider reading. They have been replaced by decodable or controlled texts. This is also a time when schools have reduced their investment in libraries and librarians.

An emphasis on phonology and a diet of decodable texts won’t help students become readers who read for pleasure. It won’t prepare them for the texts they will need to read in high school or for that matter, life.  This narrow, one size fits all approach to the teaching of reading, cannot possibly meet the needs of all Australian students. It is based on what works with students who have dyslexia or reading difficulties. There is no evidence of transferability into mainstream classrooms. It does not acknowledge that teachers are best placed to make teaching decisions for the students in their classrooms.

Focus on those in need

While we do not agree that there is a crisis in reading in Australia, we do agree that students from low SES backgrounds, Indigenous students, and those experiencing learning difficulties need more focused assistance. Much research has been conducted in this area and should be utilised to make the necessary changes for these students, including funding and staffing measures based upon equity rather than equality.

Teachers must always think critically about research, and the various reading models and frameworks being suggested or promoted and make teaching decisions based on the needs of the students they are teaching, not what is promoted by think tanks or the media. With their theoretical and practical wisdom, along with their content and contextual knowledge, teachers should be supported to make decisions that best meet the needs of the students in their classrooms. As authors of this paper, we are confident that teachers continue to work hard to meet the different needs of the diverse children in their care, despite the many traps in the reading jungle.

Noella Mackenzie is an adjunct associate professor at Charles Sturt University. Her areas of research and expertise include the teaching and learning of literacy. Martina Tassone is a senior lecturer in teacher education at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include literacy teaching, learning and assessment in the early years of schooling.

Literacy

READING, part five: why teachers must have more than this year’s model of literacy

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Noella Mackenzie and Martina Tassone explore structured literacy, whole language and balanced literacy. This is the fifth post on reading to celebrate Book Week. What we’ve covered so far:

One: How to find your way through the reading jungle

Two: What really works for readers and when

Three: What is the Simple View of Reading?

Four: What is the Science of Reading?

Reading models do not automatically translate to classroom practice. Instead, it is the knowledgeable and skilful teacher who translates models or theories into classroom practice. A teacher’s beliefs may steer them towards a particular model or theory. 

For example, teachers who believe reading for meaning is critical at all stages of reading, are more inclined to align with a model that embeds meaning throughout all stages of instruction. In contrast, a teacher who believes decoding is at the heart of reading, will align more comfortably with a model or theory that requires a strong emphasis on phonics and decodable text use. 

The reality of Australian classrooms

The teacher who has access to multiple models and a range of possible pathways, can work flexibly. This caters for the diversity of students that is the reality of Australian classrooms in the current landscape. 

Key features of Structured Literacy (SL) are identified as:

‘(a) explicit, systematic, and sequential teaching of literacy at multiple levels— phonemes, letter–sound relationships, syllable patterns, morphemes, vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraph structure, and text structure; (b) cumulative practice and ongoing review; (c) a high level of student– teacher interaction; (d) the use of carefully chosen examples and nonexamples; (e) decodable text; and  (f) prompt, corrective feedback’.

SL has been shown to be appropriate for students with dyslexia, as it addresses their core weaknesses in phonological awareness, decoding and spelling.

However, SL appears to apply ‘principles of industrial production: linearity, conformity and standardisation’ at a time when we should instead be promoting ‘a creative revolution in education’. Structured Literacy (SL) is a term often used by commercial phonics programs designed for children with dyslexia or reading difficulties.

Commercial programs in question

The quality of commercial programs has also been questioned. Researchers examined over 100 Commercial phonics programs and found considerable problems. For example: 

  • One program introduced the sound /t/ but then provided a follow-up activity that featured words in which the /t/ phoneme did not occur, for example the word ‘the’. 
  • Another example was an activity where children had to identify words that commenced with the /æ/ phoneme such as ‘A’ for apple, but also included images representing words that do not contain /æ/, as in ‘A’ for apron. 

Researchers were also concerned that the linguistic inaccuracies in some of these programs could confuse both teachers and children. Some also used gimmicks and avoided using correct terms to describe phonemes-graphemes.  An additional concern was raised about commercial programs used in pre-schools. It required children to engage in ‘busy’ work, such as colouring in worksheets, as well as drill, practice and memorisation. The ‘individual needs of students and the professional autonomy of teachers’ are de-centred by commercial  programs .

There is no research to demonstrate the benefits of SL scripted programs for mainstream classes . There is no research to demonstrate the benefits of SL scripted program for typically developing readers who make up 85-90% of students in most classrooms. SL programs are designed for the 10-15% of children experiencing learning to read difficulties. 

Why our students need skilled teachers

We believe students need knowledgeable and skilled teachers who can create differentiated teaching opportunities to meet the needs of all children; commercial programs simply cannot provide this.

Whole Language instruction refers to an approach which focuses first and foremost on whole texts. It uses these to teach the small parts of language, including words and letters. In the 1980s and 1990s, whole language was a growing movement of teachers, bearing affinities with learning centred, literature-based, multicultural classrooms in the UK and other parts of the English-speaking world including New Zealand and Australia. Whole language teachers use authentic texts or trade books (children’s/ Young Adult fiction, non-fiction, poetry, magazines, etc.) and children’s writings rather than readers and textbooks.

Some advocates of whole language believe that “for some children, a minimum of teaching, and sufficient exposure to print supported by interaction with more advanced readers including family members, is enough to learn to read”. However most children will need explicit instruction to learn how to read.

Whole language is sometimes incorrectly confused with balanced literacy

Balanced Literacy (BL) describes an approach used by many teachers in Australian classrooms until recent policy changes. BL continues to be the dominant approach in Canada, continually successful on the international literacy stage. However Ontario has recently added a Synthetic Phonics element to their curriculum. A Balanced Approach is also common in the republic of Ireland, which consistently does very well in international assessments. The term ‘balanced’ is used to describe how a knowledgeable teacher works to respond to constantly shifting student needs, in the day-to-day teaching of Literacy. There are  five ways to balance literacy learning:

  1. Balancing reading and writing, 
  2. Balancing phonics and comprehension,
  3. Balancing Informational texts and Narrative texts,
  4. Balancing direct instruction with dialogic approaches, and
  5. Balancing whole class instruction and small groups.

BL also offers a teacher a way of being able to cater for the diverse needs of their students. BL classrooms also focus on oral language and include shared reading, guided reading, independent reading, read aloud and writing activities that help students make connections between their reading and writing.

A brand new model

The Double Helix of Reading and Writing is a new instructional reading and writing model. The authors argue that their “model provides a rationale and evidence base for a balanced approach to teaching reading and writing . . .[and argue that] the practice of systematic phonics teaching should be carefully integrated with other main elements in reading and writing lessons and activities in early years and primary education”.

Tomorrow: the impact the media has on the teaching of reading

Noella Mackenzie is an adjunct associate professor at Charles Sturt University. Her areas of research and expertise include the teaching and learning of literacy. Martina Tassone is a senior lecturer in teacher education at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include literacy teaching, learning and assessment in the early years of schooling.

Science of reading

READING, part four: Is the science of reading settled?

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Noella Mackenzie and Martina Tassone explore the Science of Reading (SoR) in this fourth post to celebrate Book Week. What we’ve covered so far:

One: How to find your way through the reading jungle

Two: What really works for readers and when

Three: What is the Simple View of Reading?

What do people mean when they talk about the science of reading?

The terms ‘science of reading’ or ‘Science of Reading’ are often mentioned in media reports. Where have these terms come from and what do they really mean?  The science of reading (sor) as a term has been used for more than 200 years to describe reading science or reading knowledge. The  term has no single definition and is currently used in different ways by different stake-holders.   

The sor, (without capital letters) as a “corpus of objective investigation and accumulation of reliable evidence about how humans learn to read and how reading should be taught”. This sor is a rich, and constantly growing source of knowledge, a virtual library of research into reading. It has been contributed to by countless researchers from many different disciplines, with various different methodological approaches and a range of findings related to; 

  • what happens when we read, 
  • why some people find it hard to learn to read, and
  • the success or otherwise of different instructional approaches with different groups of learners. 

Reading research includes; 

  • typically developing learners, 
  • learners who find learning to read difficult, 
  • learners who are learning to read English as extra language or dialect, and 
  • adult learners. 

Should it be the Science of Teaching Reading?

In 2021, the construct  was expanded to the Science of Teaching Reading. Others have argued in 2024 that we should refer to the integration of science of teaching reading AND science of teaching writing. 

The term Science of Reading (SoR, with capital letters) is often used to refer to, or give strength to, approaches to reading instruction that privilege or prioritise synthetic phonics, Structured Literacy (SL) (International Dyslexic Association), or the Simple View of Reading (SVR). SoR has been identified as having a focus on assessed reading proficiency as the primary goal of reading instruction.

Some schools publicise that they are SoR schools and sometimes advertise for teachers who can ‘teach’ the SoR.  Some professional learning providers and commercial programs also identify with being informed by the SoR. 

This SoR, is ‘characterised by a narrow theoretical lens, an abstracted empiricism, and uncritical inductive generalisations derived from brain-imaging and eye movement data sources’.

It has been argued that ‘neuroimaging does not distinguish the phonological processing of a decoding model of reading from the graphophonic processing of a meaning-centred model’.

The practical wisdom of teachers

SoR activists often criticise teachers’ knowledge and any approaches that don’t align with SoR.  But Dehaene, often quoted by SoR advocates as providing the answers for how to teach reading based upon brain scans, suggests the practical wisdom of teachers has an important role to play in the day-to-day decisions of what different children may need. He sums up his concerns in this way:

Our own impression is that neuroscience is still far from being prescriptive. A wide gap separates the theoretical knowledge accumulated in the laboratory from practice in the classroom. Applications raise problems that are often better addressed by teachers than by the theory-based expectations of scientists.

Unfortunately, this SoR movement has led to the breaking down of reading into skills and subskills. It is taking teachers away from the bigger goal of teaching children to become readers who want to read. Some suggest that:

Instruction in sub-skills such as phonemic awareness is justified to the extent it advances the goal of reading, not for its own sake. . . Time spent jumping through PA hoops could instead be spent on activities that expand the knowledge that supports comprehending texts of increasing complexity and variety

Is the ‘science of reading’ settled? 

In the last decade alone, over 14,000 peer reviewed journal articles have been published that included the keyword reading based on a PsycINFO search. Our knowledge related to reading is not settled. It  is “ever evolving, at times circuitous, and not without controversy”. Other researchers also question the notion of settled science.

The ‘artful implementation of pedagogies and interventions that close the circle – from scientific findings translated into practical applications in education and back to addressing problems in education as impetus for evidence-informed theorizations of learning’. This has not happened with some of the studies that come under the banner of SoR. 

What are these findings really?

Findings from laboratory studies are not tested in mainstream classrooms, before being hailed as miraculous, and studies that focused on students with learning difficulties, are not tested on students without learning difficulties before being heralded as the perfect way to teach all students. This is akin to a medication that has helped control nausea in a particular group of patients with a specific illness, being prescribed to the general population to prevent or treat nausea, without clinical trials. 

Our next post will tease out the terms structured literacy, whole language and balanced literacy. 

Noella Mackenzie is an adjunct associate professor at Charles Sturt University. Her areas of research and expertise include the teaching and learning of literacy. Martina Tassone is a senior lecturer in teacher education at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include literacy teaching, learning and assessment in the early years of schooling.

READING, part three: What is the Simple View?

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Noella Mackenzie and Martina Tassone explore the Simple View of Reading (SVR) in this third post to celebrate Book Week. This describes reading at a single point in time: decoding x listening/ linguistic comprehension = reading comprehension (D x LC = RC). 

What we’ve covered so far:

One: How to find your way through the reading jungle

Two: What really works for readers and when

The SVR presumes that, once printed matter is decoded, a reader can “apply to the text exactly the same mechanisms which he or she would bring to bear on its spoken equivalent”. It is not a theory or model of how to teach reading. The SVR is not suggesting that reading is a simple process. These researchers were providing a simple explanation of why some readers experience reading difficulties.

Some advocates have used the SVR as the justification for an emphasis on phonics and decoding first (and fast). This has led to the idea that listening comprehension and reading comprehension happen after decoding. There also seems to be a misunderstanding that decoding guarantees a reader will identify each word in isolation. And then, that reader will be able to bring these words together and understand what has been read. 

The opaque nature of the English language makes this almost impossible. 

In many cases the meaning of a word (in context) determines the pronunciation of the word, rather than the other way around, e.g. I read on the train in the mornings. I read my book on the train yesterday. 

Correct pronunciation does not guarantee meaning

There are many homonyms in the English language. For example, ‘plane’ could be a straight line joining two points OR a level of existence. It could also be a level surface OR an aeroplane. It could also be an open area of land OR a wood working tool. 

Despite this, the SVR is often cited as the justification for the use of synthetic phonics programs in the early years of school, and a focus on decoding as the most important problem-solving approach to an unknown word across all grades.

Building on the Simple View of Reading

The SVR has formed the basis for more complex understandings of reading. For example, The Reading Rope diagram (Figure 1) expands the three elements of the SVR and explains the complexity of skilled reading.

‘Decoding’ is described as a subcomponent of ‘word recognition’ and does not automatically lead to comprehension. “Even if the pronunciation of all the letter strings in a passage are correctly decoded, the text will not be well comprehended if the child:

(1) does not know the words in their spoken form, 

(2) cannot parse the syntactic and semantic relationships among the words, or 

(3) lacks critical background knowledge or inferential skills to interpret the text appropriately and ‘read between the lines’”

The Reading Rope is often used in teacher professional learning sessions, although the language comprehension elements are not always given the same emphasis as the word recognition elements. As a result, word recognition or decoding instruction is often prioritised. That’s despite the fact that reading comprehension requires language comprehension which is made up of background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures (syntax and semantics), verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge. Word recognition should be taught in conjunction with language comprehension if reading comprehension is the goal. 

Much more to understand

One of the original developers of the SVR, Tumner, agrees that there is ‘much more to understand about reading than what is represented in the SVR’ and has more recently co-developed with Hoover the Cognitive Foundations of Reading Framework (CFRF). 

Figure two: The Cognitive Foundations of Reading Framework (Hoover & Tunmer, 2020)

In the figure above, “each cognitive component represents an independent, but not necessarily elemental, knowledge-skill set that is an essential, hierarchically positioned, building block in reading and learning to read”. 

This framework includes ‘background knowledge’ and ‘inferencing skills’ as well as ‘phonological, syntactic and semantic knowledge’.  The CFRF also demonstrates the complexity of the reading process. 

Numerous other models have been developed from the SVR including the Active View of Reading (AVR). The AVR highlights the ‘key self-regulation skills’ required to manage all aspects of reading.  Motivation and engagement are identified as key self-regulatory skills. These are overlooked in some other reading models, but other researchers have identified the importance of seeing reading as not just a technical activity but one that needs to engage hearts and minds.

The SVR does not suggest that reading is a simple process and it is not a model of reading instruction. In the next post we will explore the Science of Reading (SoR) and unpick some of the confusions associated with it. 

Noella Mackenzie is an adjunct associate professor at Charles Sturt University. Her areas of research and expertise include the teaching and learning of literacy. Martina Tassone is a senior lecturer in teacher education at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include literacy teaching, learning and assessment in the early years of schooling.

Reading

READING, part two: What really works for readers and when?

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This morning Noella Mackenzie and Martina Tassone helped us navigate the reading jungle

We start this afternoon’s post with evidence-based instruction (EBI) and then move to a discussion of phonics/phonemic awareness.  

The term ‘evidence-based’ is used widely. It can be appealing even if it is not clear how the evidence being referenced was collected or analysed. Reading related science is complex. Evidence coming from science needs to be viewed from different perspectives and time, so the full picture to emerge. The evidence-based movement includes ‘a focus on behaviourist theory, quantitative research, randomised controlled trials, meta-analyses, hard numerical data and high stakes standardised testing’. It often ignores ‘structural inequalities in pursuit of better outcomes’. 

Some claim evidence to support a particular approach. Others use different evidence to claim that the same approach does not work. A common assumption is that if something works with students from one cohort it will work with all students. 

Huge differences

Any parent who has more than one child will point out the huge differences, even between two siblings. When they walk, talk, learn to feed themselves, sleeping patterns etc, etc. Take, for example, a class of 25 children who come into school together, from 25 different homes. They may vary in gender and in age, of up to 18 months. They bring more differences than can be counted and qualified. 

In terms of preparedness for school, there will be a huge range of prior experiences socially and culturally. There will also be a huge range of experience in terms of oral and written language exposure. To assume all children should start at the same point with the same instruction is naive. (For more on EBI read EduResearch Matters posts by Nicole Brinker   and Tom Mahoney. These provided  comprehensive discussions of this vexed topic.) 

The topic that is the most talked about in the current era is that of phonics or phonemic awareness instruction. While all agree that phonics is necessary for reading, the amount and methods are up for debate. Australia’s National curriculum includes the teaching of phonics. But it also recognises that when reading, children will draw on a range of sources. That includes their knowledge of letters and sounds, what makes sense and knowledge of how language works.

Children who can already read when they start school

Let’s start with the children who can already read when they begin school. It is important for teachers to first check that any children who arrive at school with the ability to read, are able to problem solve unknown words, within text, using phonological information. Children who can already demonstrate the ability to apply phonological information effectively should focus on a wide range of engagements with texts. 

Focused, systematic, and explicit phonics lessons should be aimed at children who are just starting to discover, or are still learning, how letters and sounds (phonemes) work in reading and writing. It may be difficult initially to identify those children who we will refer to as typically developing readers. These children make up the majority of most classrooms. Most will need daily focused phonics lessons for the first year of school. 

Those who show early signs of struggle

Assessments of children’s reading will efficiently and accurately determine what children know, what they can do. These same assessments can be used to determine when children no longer need phonics teaching for reading. A small group (10-15%) may show early signs of struggle and may possibly be diagnosed as experiencing reading difficulties. These children will need more focused instruction in addition to the daily classroom program. 

While phonics is a necessary element of reading instruction, and will probably account for approximately 25-30 mins of daily instruction in the first year of school, there are different methods for teaching phonics. 

Synthetic phonics

Synthetic phonics is a particular decontextualised, approach to teaching reading that involves teaching children how to convert letters or letter groups into sounds (phonemes) and then blending these sounds to form words and/or non-words. Commercial Structured phonics programs usually use a synthetic phonics approach.  Even the strongest supporters of a phonics first approach question the need for Synthetic Phonics. ”In our view, the evidence is not yet sufficient to conclude that a synthetic phonics approach should be preferred over an analytic one”.

Analytic phonics

Analytic phonics (also referred to as analytical phonics or implicit phonics) refers to an approach that focuses on teaching the sounds (phonemes) associated with particular letter patterns within the context of a whole word. 

Embedded phonics

Embedded phonics, integrates phonics instruction into the context of reading authentic texts, rather than being taught as separate, isolated skills.  Recent research conducted in Melbourne illustrated the affordances of explicit phonics instruction integrated into a rich literacy environment. It showed the clear benefits for students when phonics was taught in context.

Analytic and embedded methods may be described as contextualised approaches and are often integrated. All approaches to phonics instruction can be systematic and all involve explicit instruction. 

Phonics instruction through writing is often overlooked and yet provides the potential for children to explore letter sound relationships from a different perspective than when reading. Instead of going from letter to sound they go from sound to letter. What can I hear? What letters could I use to make that sound? 

A concern expressed by some, is how long focused phonics or phonemic awareness (PA) instruction should continue. 

The goal is to read

The goal of teaching children to read is reading, not phonemic awareness .

We know learning to read does not require being able to identify 44 phonemes or demonstrate proficiency on phoneme deletion and substitution tasks. How do we know that? Because until very recently no one who learned to read had to do these things. Instruction in sub-skills such as phonemic awareness is justified to the extent it advances the goal of reading, not for its own sake. 

Problems with the way phonics is sometimes referred to by advocates of the Science of Reading have also been identified (more on the SoR in a future post)

The idea that a certain level of PA is prerequisite for reading, and that PA training should continue until the student becomes highly proficient at PA tasks regardless of how well they are reading is emblematic of problems that have arisen within the Science of Reading approach. It is an overprescription that reflects a shallow understanding of reading development, yet has become a major tenet of the “science of reading”.

An integrated approach

In 2000, The National Reading Panel (NRP) in the US suggested systematic phonics instruction, although important, “should be integrated with other reading instruction to create a balanced reading program”. The NRP even warned against phonics becoming a dominant component in a reading program.  The 2005  Rowe Report on the Australian National Inquiry into the Teaching of Reading stated the importance of systematic phonics instruction. But it also noted it was equally important that . . .

Teachers should provide an integrated approach to reading that supports the development of oral language, vocabulary, grammar, reading fluency, comprehension and the literacies of new technologies.

More recently, it has been argued that the teaching of phonics to typically developing readers should be “contextualised in whole texts, including a focus on comprehension and including the teaching of writing within reading lessons”. This claim is well supported by a seminal 1990 study which compared de-contextualised phonics teaching with contextualised phonics teaching and a ‘business as usual’ control group. Recent research conducted in Melbourne also showed that a contextualised phonics intervention was more effective than de-contextualised phonics because it bridged the learning about phonemes, with input on reading more generally, in order to promote broader transfer of skills.

It’s all about context

Has this started you thinking and perhaps questioning what you may have read about phonics and evidence-based instruction in the media? Tomorrow we explore the Simple View of Reading and how that’s influenced much of the reading research over recent times. 

Noella Mackenzie is an adjunct associate professor at Charles Sturt University. Her areas of research and expertise include the teaching and learning of literacy. Martina Tassone is a senior lecturer in teacher education at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include literacy teaching, learning and assessment in the early years of schooling.

READING, part one: How to find your way through the jungle

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To celebrate Book Week, EduResearch Matters is publishing a six part series on reading by Noella Mackenzie and Martina Tassone.

A jungle is a land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. The jungle metaphor describes the current landscape in regard to science and reading. The huge amount of research published in the last two decades, the media interpretations or misinterpretations of selected findings, and claims the reading science is settled, are akin to a dense forest. The policies and mandates teachers dealing with are like tangled vegetation. The tropical climate refers to the heat in the debate. In this series of blog posts we try to make sense of the jungle and its dense forests and tangled vegetation, challenge the notion that the science is settled, and take some of the heat out of the debate. 

Learning to read

Ever since humans have been writing they have also been reading.  A person who could read often taught a learner to do what they themselves could already do. The instructors had no formal training and no access to theories or methods. In wealthy households there may have been a governess or master tutor to teach children to read. But in many households, a literate parent or friend provided the reading instruction. The most common text used for instruction was probably the bible. And these instructors were not teaching 25 students in a classroom. Instead, they were probably teaching highly motivated individuals, who saw being able to read as a way out of their current situation. 

In the current climate, we need to consider a range of questions:  

  • Why is the teaching of reading such a hot topic in the current era?
  •  Is learning to read a natural process? 
  • Is reading simple or complex? 
  • Is there a right way to teach reading? 
  • What is the role of phonics, and is there a right way to teach phonics? 
  • What does reading research have to say about learning to read and reading instruction? 
  • What is the Science of Reading? 
  • What does evidence-based actually mean? 
  • What impact has the media had on the debates about reading? 

We will respond to these, and many other questions, in a series of 6 blog posts, in an attempt to remove some of the mystery and heat from this topic. 

Both authors have taught many children how to read and have decades of combined classroom teacher experience before moving into academic and researcher roles. Both continue to work with classroom teachers in classrooms. Let’s start!

Learning to read is not natural

It’s not a hard wired skill like learning to talk, although a great deal of learning might happen quite organically within the home and community before formal instruction begins. Children who hear stories read aloud and songs and rhymes repeated often, develop an ear for the sounds of written English. 

From a young age, many are able to recognise some of the differences between spoken and written language, even if they cannot explain the differences. The child who picks up a book and recites using the patterns and rhythms of picture story books is showing knowledge of written language but does not speak to people in these written language patterns. 

In today’s world most people send their children to school to learn to read, but some families choose to homeschool with a parent taking on the instructor role. These parents often have no formal training, although they do have access to resources and curriculum guides. They often respond to their children’s need to learn to read in the same way that they respond to their need to learn to do many other things, (e.g. walk, feed themselves, dress themselves, take turns, share, ride a bike). Children add reading to their set of skills at a time that works for them. 

Different stages, different ages

Parents instinctively understand that children learn in different ways and at different ages. School starting age varies greatly across countries.  In Australia, while we are having debates about how children learn to read at ages 5 or 6, in some countries children do not start formal schooling (or reading) until 7 or 8 years of age (e.g. Finland). Families who homeschool do not feel the same pressure as teachers in schools. So, what does research tell us about reading? 

Reading research has a rich history, a contested and expansive present, and an interesting future, as researchers endeavour to understand what is a multidimensional, neurological process ‘mediated by social and cultural practices’ . 

It is difficult to research foundational educational processes that are as complex as reading. In contrast, it is easy to test the effectiveness of letter learning based upon a particular approach to teaching letters. Short-term gains are also easiest to measure and control for, while long term learning is much more challenging to measure and to control for. Additionally, teaching and learning are sensitive to differences among teachers, students and settings. 

What works with one mightn’t work with another

Even medical researchers agree that what may work in one situation with patient X, despite being faithfully repeated with patient Y, can have a different effect altogether.  

The complexity of the reading act has led to multiple disciplines investigating or researching reading using different theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches, some focused on the process of reading, others on the practice of reading and still others on reading instruction. For example, research highlights brain maturation and reading experience.

Reading is a learned skill that is likely influenced by both brain maturation and experience…results suggest that children who are better readers, and who perhaps read more than less skilled readers, exhibit different development trajectories in brain reading regions. Understanding relationships between reading performance, reading experience and brain maturation trajectories may help with the development and evaluation of targeted interventions.

Not all evidence is equal

Perhaps brain maturation and the impact of reading experience deserve further consideration when determining policy and planning instruction. Teachers need access to research evidence in order to make informed decisions about the teaching of reading in their classrooms. Not all evidence is equal. Selective use of limited research by those with a vested interest can give the illusion that the evidence is in, and the reading science is settled, when this is not the case.

In the next post we will continue the discussion of evidence and evidence-based reading instruction.

Noella Mackenzie is an adjunct associate professor at Charles Sturt University. Her areas of research and expertise include the teaching and learning of literacy. Martina Tassone is a senior lecturer in teacher education at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include literacy teaching, learning and assessment in the early years of schooling.